Reprising their presentations from this year's World Economic Forum Rensselaer will be (l-r) Boleslaw Szymanski, Jonathan Dordick, President Shirley Ann Jackson, and Richard Siegel.

World Economic Forum Presentations To Be Reprised March 27

A glimpse of the unique, world-leading exchange of high-level thinking that takes place at the annual World Economic Forum (WEF) in Davos, Switzerland, is coming to the Rensselaer campus.

On Tuesday, March 27, President Shirley Ann Jackson and three top Institute researchers will reprise the “Ideas Lab” WEF presentation they made on Jan. 27. They were among the few academic leaders in the world invited to give such a presentation in Davos, building on the prior four years when President Jackson received invitations to attend and speak in Davos.

The presentation will take place at 3:30 p.m. in the Curtis R. Priem Experimental Media and Performing Arts Center Theater Studio 2, followed by a question-and-answer session and reception.

President Jackson will be joined by the following researchers, who will repeat their Davos presentation for the Rensselaer community:

Jonathan Dordick, director of the Rensselaer Center for Biotechnology and Interdisciplinary Studies and the Howard P. Isermann '42 Professor of Chemical and Biological Engineering

Richard Siegel, director of the Rensselaer Nano-technology Center and the Robert W. Hunt
Professor of Materials Science and Engineering

Boleslaw Szymanski, director of the Social Cognitive Networks Academic Research Center, and the Claire and Roland Schmitt Distinguished Professor of Computer Science

The presentation will explain how the transformation of Rensselaer has fueled development of ideas that move from the laboratory into commercial applications, leading to technological and other advances that improve our lives.

The primary focus of the presentation will be on the decade-long transformation of Rensselaer, under the comprehensive Rensselaer Plan, into a fully realized national research university that has enabled path-breaking research in many areas, including biotechnology, nanotechnology, and social cognitive network science.